A Non Destructive Reflectometry Based Method for the Location and Characterization of Incipient Faults in Complex Unknown Wire Networks

During the last decade, vast efforts have been invested in research and industry to detect soft noncritical faults in wiring networks. Although time domain reflectometry based methods (TDR) have been the center stage of such techniques, the capability of characterizing the located faults was still out of reach. In fact, this is so important as it can potentially enable preventive maintenance well before the fault's deterioration to critical dangerous stages. An assessment of the fault's situation becomes possible thus maximizing the system functionality and safety while minimizing the out-of-service time. In this paper, we will propose an approach based on the tenets of TDR and post-processing techniques, namely baselining and optimization based algorithms, to detect, locate and characterize soft faults embedded in complex networks. More importantly, this will be accomplished using a single testing port of a totally unknown network whose extremities are kept connected to their loads. Numerical as well as practical experimental results will be employed to validate the efficiency of the proposed approach.